Monday, June 27, 2016

Yay, we are celebrating Man of Tomorrow Monday with Dan Jurgens and Butch Guice

I´m still recovering from my visit to the Stuttgart Comic Con Yesterday but I couldn´t pass up another " two for one " combo as Dan Jurgens ( 57 ) and Jackson " Butch " Guice ( 55 ) both celebrate their birthdays Today.

They both have done a lot of other comics but they were together on the Superman books during the Death of Superman storyline which was one of the most successful storyline because they not only killed off Superman, they also had a plan as to what would happen next. Butch Guice came on board in the aftermath and took over ACTION COMICS and at that time I was not the biggest fan of his work. But since I read all of the Superman books ( is that even possible Today ? ) I saw a lot of his work on this title.

Dan Jurgens was on the Superman books a bit longer than Butch Guice as he came in after John Byrne had left and he went from penciling one book to write and draw several. For comic fans there is the John Byrne era and then the following one Dan Jurgens era with the death and anything that followed like Superman in the all black costume and the long hair. Writing Superman was such a big part of his life that he was still doing Superman stories when he was working on Marvel´s Thor and Captain America. So here are a few more examples of Dan Jurgens´ and Butch Guice´s art :

Since I didn´t post Yesterday there are still the celebrity birthdays of June the 26th to take care of starting with the youngest, Ariana Grande at 23. She wasn´t somebody I was interested in but after seeing her do musical impressions on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live I get the feeling I should probably listen to some of her music.

Strange coincidence department : our next birthday is Jennette McCurdy with 24 years and she was on Sam & Cat together with Ariana Grande.

Jennette, who´s first name vexes my auto correction for some reason, sure has grown up in all the right places since the iCarly show days.

Which makes it a bit less creepy if she was one of your guilty tv crushes.

I have to admit that I watched a few episodes of iCarly and I found the character Jennette played, Sam was more interesting. Which is often the case as the supporting characters get to be wild and crazy while the main characters have to be more straight. In any case as usual you never catch the interesting episodes and I somehow managed to miss this one.

Finding stuff on german morning tv host Nadine Krüger who celebrated her 39th birthday Yesterday was extremely difficult since every search gave me more stuff on Diane Krüger. I thought I had a good picture somewhere but it is gone. And since I couldn´t find a good video with Power Girl lookalike contest winner Nadine this picture is all I can post.

Strange coincidence department 2 : last Monday Nicole Kidman had her birthday, Today Chris O´Donnell celebrates his 46th birthday who is best known for playing agent G Callen on Navy CIS : Los Angeles and he tops Nicole in bad Batman flicks since he was in two. What I find one of the greatest injustices in movie history is that we had to suffer rubber Batnipples when we would have preferred to see Nicole´s nipples.

At first I wanted to acknowledge Chris Isaak´s 60th anniversary with a video from The Voice but then I decided to post a video with him. While I was still thinking if I should choose Baby I Did A Bad Bad Thing or Blue Hotel I found this one so I thought, why not go with all his greatest hits ?

Strange coincidences department 3 : in my last post was Carly Simon´s song Nobody Does It Better from the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me and Today Robert Davi, who played a James Bond villain in License To Kill turns 63. Robert has been in a plethora of movies and tv series from The Fall Guy ( don´t worry, no Markie Post video Today ) to The Incredible Hulk to The Goonies, Raw Deal, Action Jackson, Die Hard and Predator 2. There also was a movie - I don´t remember the title - where he basically played the guy from Renegade : he was an ex - cop who was always unshaven and wore sunglasses and a long trenchcoat. He also had a motorbike but unlike Lorenzo Lamas he made the guy cool. I guess the only reason to watch Renegade was Lorenzo´s wife Kathleen Kinmont who could have made a fortune as a stripper with a hardbody like that.

Speaking of stripper hardbodies, Robert Davi was also on Showgirls with Elizabeth Berkley where he played the sleazy owner of the Cheetah club. I bet they had a few lapdance sessions to help Elizabeth prepare for role.

Strange coincidences department 4 : I also mentioned Elizabeth in my first post about Paul Ryan´s Emergency Stop because on that day another one of her co stars in Showgirls, Gina Gershon celebrated her birthday. Well among the celebrity birthdays of that particular day was also german actor Theo Lingen. Now Theo was in some movies by Fritz Lang, among them M and Today it is Peter Lorre´s anniversary who played the killer.

With that we are finished with Yesterdays birthday and Today there are only three I have to mention. The first is Tobey Maguire who celebrates his 41st birthday. He was in what we now call " the good " Spider - Man movies. Except the last one. Let´s all forget the third Spider - Man movie, okay ? But in my opinion he embodied Peter Parker better than Andrew Garfield and which ten year old kid they will cast for the next.

J. J. Abrams who turns 60 has brought us many things like Alias ( the tv show, not the comic ), Lost, Fringe and the revamped versions of Star Wars and Star Trek but his greatest achievement in cinematography is getting Alice Eve to show her underwear. There are some people who complain that this particular scene served no purpose in the movie and was only shot so the producer could put it in the trailer. To which I have to say : Congratulations guys, you finally understand how Hollywood works.

By the way, if you have a sexbomb like Alice Eve in the cast and you don´t have her do a scene where she is at least in underwear or a bikini you have failed as a director. If all this talk gives you the impression we are not headed for a video about J. J. Abrams you are right so here is one with the lovely Alice Eve on Craig Ferguson. Those two are always funny.

Last but not least I have to mention french cult siren Isabelle Adjani who turns 61. I read somewhere that she had a clause in her contract that her nude scenes in One Deadly Summer were cut in the video version so more people would go to the movie theaters to see her nude. She has been in a few gems but if I had to recommend a movie for those who haven´t seen much of her work I´d go with Subway. Christopher Lambert is her co star, it has a terrific soundtrack ( I bet there is one song you know ) and it´s one of the most unorthodox movies I have seen in my life. In a good way.

I restrained myself from putting too many videos in the entertainment block because there were two more I wanted to add. First off you can´t have a Superman post without a Superman video and while the death of Superman parody from Saturday Night Live would have fit Today´s topic I already had a video from that show. And since the Nostalgia Critic´s review of the Man Of Steel movie has apparently been erased here´s a video with Comicbookgirl19 where she talks a bit about the movie but mostly about why the Superman comics Birthright and All Star Superman are so much better than the movie. I can vouch for All Star Superman but I haven´t read Birthright because I´m not a big fan of revisionist comic history. Okay, not really since I loved John Byrne´s revamp but that still works. They don´t have to redo Superman´s origin every five years.

As usual you find the best videos after you have finished a post which is the reason why Today´s cartoon video is neither the 75th anniversary of Superman tribute nor the first episode of one of my all time literature adaptions, Dogtanian And The Three Moskehounds. Instead here is an episode of Space Angel by Alex Toth who was spotlighted in my last post.

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About Me

Working stiff at day, secret crimefighting blogger at night I was born into a world I never made. I always loved comics and even wrote and drew some. Together with my brother who is much more interested in making comics we even self-published a comic called POWER FREAKS that is infamous in Germany. Due to financial troubles and artistic differences sadly there has been only one issue so far. Being more of a reader than a collector of comics I always read the foreign versions of the american comics what led me to start this little blog. If you have any comment ( or want to send me some review copies ) please drop me a line in the comment section or send me an e - mail.